What are you even talking about lol.
Altruism and selflessness that benefit the group are developed in individual organisms as a mechanism to increase group success. Genes, changes at the epigenetic level in the parents and environmental factors before, during, and after pregnancy and the birth of a child influence their behavior and personality. There doesn't need to be an "immortal spirit" that dictates how your baby acts.
Yes, the spark of life itself is rather interesting and seems a lot harder to bring back than put out, but I'm not sure you're really getting the main points of the book. And science on the matter has come a loooong way since 2006.
Anti-science rhetoric is part of their anti-critical thinking stance, leaders want followers to be nice and obedient and that's just their way of making sure everyone in the flock stays nice and ignorant to the fact they're being fleeced. There's a lot of interplay between politics and evangelical christians for a while now and it's impossible to understand their "movement" without knowing who has been empowering them and their ideals and why.
I think the immortal spirit means what you call the spark of life. Most religions will tell you that all spirits are connected with the root source as god.
It's a metaphysical way of talking about existence, or the fact of being. Interesting fact, the hebrew word YWHW or whatever means 'he who is'...
There's just one problem with the word science today. It's changed from being pure facts such as math or physical laws, basically the STEM field, to studies that are voted democratically such as economy, psychology etc. I use the word studies on purpose. Yes those are 'sciences' in common language, but those are theories that are even less likely to accurate. The STEM field is complex enough, now add the human factor and the philosophy behind why we do things and you find answers that can be 'proven' in both ways, it depends just on how you present (and collect) the stats and facts
Oh man don't even get me started on politics within science and the publish or perish ecosystem caused by how they seek funding. STEM is cool and all but because of how society is constructed now there's little to no critical thought put into how advances in the field will affect society at large, largely because doing so would put a dent into the profits of corporations who benefit from said advances. Take philosophy or sociology for instance. Are they well-funded fields? Hell no. Mostly because anything real that comes out of any thought put into the field would tell you that the direction we're headed as a species is going to hurt us in the long run, and that is detrimental to next quarter's profits, so good riddance you, we're going to label you a pseudo-intellectual, as we don't need that gibberish 'round these parts.